A dear friend sent me an email a couple of days ago because he had just tasted a great ‘old vine’ Zinfandel - I am also very fond of Zinfandel and have had a number of them designated as old vine and even ancient vine. But it reminded me that the term, ‘old vine’, can be quite nebulous and can even be misleading as marketers attempt to find ever-new buzz words to entice consumers in a very crowded wine market. This term tends to be most often associated with Zinfandel wines and to a much lesser extent, Cabernet Sauvignon.

So what does ‘old vine’ mean beyond the obvious? And does it really translate into better wine? To get a grip on this we need to understand vines and how they work. This sounds boring at first but I am absolutely fascinated by the subject and just how important vines and the vineyard are in distinguishing great wine from just okay wine. Apart from terroir (a sense of place that encompasses soil, weather, micro climate, rainfall, drainage, sunshine and the angle of the sun on grapes and so on), there may be no more important element of winemaking than what happens in the vineyard. After all, it has to start with the fruit because wine with bad fruit to begin with, can never become better during the winemaking process.

There is a voluminous amount of information we know about plants, vines, and grapes but this article is not attempting to fill in all of the missing knowledge, but rather give you a very brief non-technical overview of a couple of principles. Current thinking has it like this: grape producing vines are lazy, but particular. It can’t even muster the fortitude to grow a strong enough wood trunk to support itself like many in the plant world, so it would rather crawl up a tree, a trellis, or anything else that will put it high enough to receive an adequate amount of life-giving sunshine. Grape vines don’t require much in the way of nutrition or even water, so when they’re ‘happy’, meaning they are getting enough nutrition and water, they will produce a lot of vegetative growth (non-fruit bearing stalks, shoots and leaves). If they are not pleased with where they are, they want to move but being planted in the ground makes this notion kind of inconvenient so the next best thing is for the vine to produce fruit. I know, it sounds strange to think of a plant that can deduce so much information from its environment and then cleverly come up with a solution to any issues it may have. But it’s true. 

An ‘unhappy’ vine puts its energy into growing its fruit. Initially these grapes are all very small, green in color, and blend in well with the leaves, which helps to ensure that predators like birds do not eat them while they’re too young (there is a motive behind this and if a vine’s grapes are consumed too young, the vine will fail its mission to grow elsewhere – keep reading). Besides young unripe grapes are very high in acidity and do not taste good to fruit-eating animals. As the grape ripens however, not only does it taste better but also the seeds inside become developed enough to reproduce the vine if put into the soil or dropped somewhere. Here’s the really important part about vines: upon ripening, the grape turns color to draw attention to animals that will eat them and spread their seeds to other areas. This process of changing color is known as véraison. Through years of observation, winemakers have discovered that if the vine were stressed due to lack of water or nutrition or other essentials, it would slow its vegetative growth and instead concentrate its energy on producing grapes. Brilliant!

But this is only a part of the picture. Most often great wine is made with grapes of extreme concentration, that is, there is intense flavor from the grape. In order to help concentrate the flavor of grapes, vineyards will stress the vine, prune excess vegetative growth, pray for good weather, and reduce the yield (yield is measured in tons per acre in the wine world) by thinning, which is simply a method of cutting excess fruit from the vine and discarding it throughout the growing season. Thinning can take place in the vineyard one time or multiple times per season, depending on the vines, but concentrating flavor from the grapes by reducing yields is an important measure in making excellent wine.

A new vine just planted will begin to produce usable fruit in about three years. In about five or six years the vine should be producing very good fruit and continue to do so for thirty years or more. Usually a vine that is 40 to 80 years old is considered to be ‘old vine’ but there are some vines still producing fruit at 120 years of age! As a vine ages however, it slows down in its vegetative growth and typically builds up a woody surface similar to a tree trunk. Scientists believe that old vines store carbohydrates in this woody bark-like exterior during its dormant winter stage and are able to use that energy to produce better ripeness and concentrated fruit during the next growing season than younger vines. From a vineyard management point, old vines are great because they don’t require the maintenance that younger vines demand although very young vines can also be easy to manage because they have not yet established a root system to produce a lot of unruly vegetative growth.

So does wine produced from old vines make better wine? The answer is it depends. It depends on the winery, the actual age of the vines (a twenty year old vine is not really considered old but it might not prevent some winery from using the term ‘old vine’ on the label), and the actual quality of the fruit the vine produces. Old vines can be susceptible to disease like ‘dead arm’ – and even some diseased old vines can improve grapes, others not so much. Just be aware that so far there is no definitive answer to the question of old vine quality partly because there are no legal parameters put in place to define it. If you are buying wine from a reputable winery, chances are good that the quality is better from an ‘old vine’ bottling than from younger vines but this may not always be true. As always, the buyer must be aware and must always use the palate to discern, not marketing words.

Some of my favorite Zinfandel producers ever are Seghesio, Rosenblum and Orin Swift. Not all of these fine estates produce Zinfandel from old vines but all of these are very worthy of your attention if you enjoy this spectacular grape variety.

David Boyer

Photo: 90 year old vines in Sonoma County California. Licensed from and © iStockphoto.com